Thought I'd submit this one too, since it's a shortie. An early studenty work, but charming nevertheless. It's the one very early sonata (of ca. the first 20 or so) I am adding to my repertory. Really my main reason for doing this sonata is the bouncy, exuberant presto, which seems more in the composer's mature style.

Well played. There are a number of stylistic elements which are not entirely to my taste, but that's personal preference, no doubt conditioned by my being used to an edition which is clearly not the same as yours. Mine is Peters, ed Martienssen 1937, which claims to be based on the Urtext version of Karl Päsler.

The first movement is, for my liking, a bit too "military", staccatos too short and spiky, giving more daylight between notes than I would like.You detach the 16ths from the following 8ths in bars 1 and 5, which contributes to the spikiness. My edition slurs them.In bar 2 and similar places, you play the first ornament as a turn, presumably because your edition tells you to. I guess that works, but because I'm used to something else, it sounds strange to me. My edition has a (lower) mordent there (i.e. with a line through it).Bars 15 and 18 should, I think, be echoes of 14 and 17, and similarly where it comes again later, and also in bars 34 and 35.In bars 20 and 21 you play the 1st and 3rd 8th of each bar f, and the 2nd and 4th p, again possibly because your edition tells you to. For my taste, this makes it feel too heavy, and these accents detract from the longer phrase which begins in 19, takes in 20 and 21, leading to 22 or ultimately 23.In the very last bar, but on the repeat only, you omit the B. This sounds a little odd to me. A similar thing is often done in minuets, but I would then tend to omit the second E as well.

In complete contrast, the way you play the 2nd movement is, for my taste, slushily over-romantic, almost Chopinesque. There are places in Haydn sonata movements where it's OK to wallow in nostalgia, but this, I suggest, is not one of them One never knows exactly what "Menuetto" is supposed to mean in terms of tempo, since there are both stately and lively minuets, but I think your version is too slow, and that it ought to feel not "in three" but "in one", but without being too lively. I'd say the tempo of your trio is almost fast enough, but that the minuet itself should go a little faster than the trio.

I liked the 3rd movement best. Again, though, in places some notes are bit short, notably the 4ths in bars 1 to 4. In my edition they don't even have dots on, only the 8ths have.There is an interesting editorial discrepancy. In bars 28 and 32 you play the last chord as C# E, my edition instead has D# F# in 28 (or D F# in 32). A similar thing happens later on where the notes are a fourth higher.

Thanks for your intelligent, detailed comments. Good that my interpretations are coming across as I had hoped, even if you don't agree with them. The first movement I had intended to be a rather rhythmically exact, martial march. The second I interpret romantically (though the slushy part I hadn't intended ). I too like the third movement best, both the piece and my performance of it. Regarding editions, I use the Wiener-Urtext Universal editions. There are no dynamic markings in this early work, so the dynamics you hear are my own "editorial" additions. I don't remember Peters as ever being true Urtext like the Universal or Heinle, but I could be wrong.

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